After evening sundowners and our astronomy lesson in the bush we are welcomed back into the gossamer wings of Lion Sands for dinner on the lantern lit deck. The deck is a work of art with cut outs for the four giant jackleberry trees that grow up through it and lend shade.

This South Africa safari tour lodge has beautiful raised teak walkways to and from the suites for easy walking but they are always repairing them as the hippos walk on them, too. Their tiny feet supporting 3 tons of weight puncture the planks, but this is wildlife habitat so man must accommodate them.   

Up at 5:00 am for our morning game drive. The sun is slanting through the clouds and it is wonderfully cool this morning. On our game drives here we exit the vehicle and walk into the bush with our rifle toting guide for close encounters with the wildlife. Standing very near a 20' tall giraffe I am struck by its vast height.

They seem so much shorter from the 7'tall vehicle.  We see a beautiful male kudu, its horns spiraling into the sun, a herd of zebras and apart from the herd, a new mother with a 2-day-old baby circling its mother to memorize her stripes. A journey of giraffes is posing and showing off their best model’s strut for our camera. We see a huge herd of impala, but still no adult lions.

South Africa Safari Tour: Sabi Bush Lodge, Sabi Sand Reserve

We check into our next South Africa safari tour camp, Sabi Bush Lodge, in time for lunch and a rest before our afternoon game drive. The food is gourmet and the individual chalets are the size of large apartments styled after Mozambique village huts. This was one of the first luxury South Africa safari tour lodges built and they do not make them this oversized any more.

The floors are a cool slate and we have a living room, bedroom and a large bath. The game drive with Magdel, our first female ranger on this South Africa safari tour, is fabulous. She is excited about everything, always laughing and so articulate. We see a huge herd of elephant and wildebeest and finally our three lions.

In the bush, like nowhere else, I am struck by the majesty and sacredness of nature. Here we are surrounded by staggering natural beauty and endlessly fascinating cultures steeped in myths, legends and ceremonies. In the little villages we passed through on the way to the school, time seems to have stood still and ancient rituals and ceremonies govern their lives. 

A South Africa safari tour is deep-dish comfort and calmness amid a global storm of terrorism. My brain is taking some cool down laps to unspool. I am keenly aware of the privilege as a brief tenant in this amazing wilderness. The first law of Good Wildlife Tourism is that our presence should not cause stress for the wildlife.

A delicious gourmet dinner is served in the lantern lit boma and all through dinner we hear the three lions that we saw an hour earlier as they make their chilling territorial calls that echo across the plains. Magdel escorts us to our cottage by 10:00 pm because we have to be up at 4:00 am for our balloon ride and bush breakfast tomorrow.  

South Africa Safari Tour: Ngala Lodge, Timbavati Nature Reserve

Our South Africa safari tour game drive this morning at Simbambili is the most thrilling and frightening of all, as we park the vehicle and go on foot with Jaco, our rifle toting ranger, and Moses, the tracker, after a rhino.

We walk 15 minutes into the center of the bush, single file and careful not to step on twigs as the rhino has an acute sense of hearing and smell. Fortunately, he sees in only one dimension (which is why we are single file behind Jaco).

We feel safe as we are approaching down wind and he cannot smell us. When we are within a few feet of him we all hold our breath as the wind suddenly changes and the rhino begins to run madly around us in circles. Our South Africa safari tour ranger distracts the rhino and Moses leads us quickly in the opposite direction to safety.  On the walk back, even Jaco admitted that he was scared.

The adrenalin rush has us all hyper for the rest of the drive.  We had morning coffee at a watering hole with a pod of hippos, zebras and a huge crocodile cruising about. The zebras were thirsty, but too skittish to drink with the crock hiding in the water. They tip toe down to the water and then scamper nervously back up the slope without drinking.

Their senses tell them there is danger even though they cannot see the croc under the water. We followed the leopard that we saw last night again today until he crossed into Londolozi and we could not follow. All too soon it is time to depart.

This is my second stay at Ngala and it is one of my favorite South Africa safari tour reserves. The cottages are simple and sweet, but the gaming is better than in any other lodge. It is 15,000 hectares of wilderness and is one of the largest South Africa safari tour reserves in all of Africa.

At Ngala we have another female ranger, Megan, perhaps because we are three women and one man. Immediately we see a baby leopard negotiating the bank of the river for a drink. His mother has left him to search for food and he is in trouble already. Cats do not like to get their paws wet and we laugh as he shakes the mud off his paws after each drink.

There is wildlife everywhere along the banks of the river. Just then Abed, our South Africa safari tour tracker with amazing eyes, spotted a pack of wild dogs. They are a rare sighting because they are the second most endangered species on the African continent and almost extinct. Only 2000 exist in the world and they are found only in isolated packs in South Africa and Botswana.

The Ethiopian wolf is the first most endangered. This is my ninth wildlife safari but the first time I have seen the wild dogs. We spent an amazing 45 minutes with the dogs darting through the bush with the dogs right beside us. The only difference was that we knocked down a hundred trees and shrubs and they did not.

At sundowners the purple sunsets streaked with candy pick and gold are precious gifts from Africa that transport me to another reality. My mind stops thinking and I am rendered speechless. In this inner stillness I forget yesterday and tomorrow and am completely in the now, a euphoric state that easily becomes addictive. I feel like I am experiencing the magic of the world, as it was when it was new –so many eons ago. Our most difficult decision is whether to look at the wild dogs or the incredible sunset. 

South Africa Safari Tour: Singita Boulders Lodge, Timbavati Nature Reserve

We are becoming blasé on our South Africa safari tour game drives now that we have seen the Magnificent Seven (lion, leopard, cape buffalo, elephant, rhino, cheetah and wild dog) in only four days of gaming.

After breakfast we go again to the private airstrip for a 20-minute flight to Singita Lodge. At Singita airstrip, we are greeted by a butler with iced bottled water and a stunning airstrip lounge in the middle of the bush. Rattan lounge chairs with cushions in bright fabrics are a foreshadowing of what is to come for us at Singita.

When we arrive at our South Africa safari tour suite I am in awe and I am the hotel queen! It is three sides floor to ceiling glass and looks out over the river full of wildlife. Everyone tells us that our suites (No's. 8 and 9) are the best suites in the South Africa safari tour lodge and they are beyond belief!

Every drawer and door handle is an animal horn. The doors have twisted kudu horns for handles and the drawers use polished blessbok horns. The lampshades are made of porcupine quills, guinea hen feathers or ostrich eggshells. There is a real zebra hide ottoman that sells in the gift shop for $1,200 US. The pillows are mud cloth in a native design and everything is in minimalist black, brown and taupe. The linens are Egyptian cotton and as soft as silk.

It is the most elegant and sophisticated South Africa safari tour lodge I have ever stayed in. I can see why it was the first and only accommodation in the history of Conde Nast Gold List Reader Poll to get a perfect 100 score, an honor it has held for the last three years.  

This morning at Singita we found two male lions that look thin and hungry. They have lost their "home girls" for hunting and are weak and ill.

We saw lots of rhinos and followed a leopard for an hour. The terrain is like scenery from "I Dreamed of Africa" with the Drakensberg Mountains in the background and vast rolling plains dotted with rows of trees.  The beauty of Kruger Park area is its diversity of terrain, which produces a diversity of animals.

We treasure our last game drive on this South Africa safari tour. It is cool and pleasant after the rain and we get a branch shower every time we brush against the foliage. I surrender to the wild and breathe in the green scent of the bush.

The warm breath of Africa blows across my face and the sounds of nature fill me up to the top. A leopard tortoise lumbers along inside his spotted shell, and I think about how I consider travel without adventure to be monotony. Without it I travel through strange lands untouched and feeling nothing. In Africa I absorb every smell, sound, sight and image and they remain imprinted on my eyes forever.

In the rough-hewn bush another rhythm evolves-one with more pauses and more appreciation for my porcelain perfect life. The hectic rhythm of the suburbs is drowned out by the silent, soft earth. The noise stops and an inner music takes its place.

And so I come to the end of another South Africa safari tour adventure. Travel broadens our perspective, increases tolerance and weaves a web of connectedness with all people and places. It is an investment in life. From the beginning of time, humans have felt compelled to step beyond their known realm and find a new environment and a new understanding of other cultures and places.

Mark Twain said, "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow mindedness." Especially now nature has become more meaningful in our fast paced world with diminishing personal space. Our lives have become so technical that we all long to symbolically pack up our tents and retreat to the untamed wild of Africa where there are things of spirit and truth. We seek a quiet place where the silence is so deep that you can hear the heart of the earth beating - and we stop to listen.   

Many people, including myself, feel that they have a spiritual experience in Africa and that is what keeps them returning again and again to the Dark Continent. I leave Africa with another bit of it etched on my soul and a greater appreciation for my privileged life. Africa is my tonic, the lifeblood that makes me feel truly alive, the real thing- no clichés!

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